Contemporary Essays on Greek Ideas: The Kilgore Festschrift Book

Cratylus is one of Plato's early-middle dialogues. It is somewhat puzzling for the modern reader, since much of the dialogue is taken up with fanciful folk etymologies of Greek words. Socrates is investigating whether the names of the Gods, heroes, citizens, or natural elements are meaningful, and in the process spins off etymology after etymology, each one more implausible than the next. The intention seems to be mockery; just as Plato earlier reveals the faulty logic of the sophists, so he exposes the emptiness of grammarians. I wish I could say that the satire has lost its bite with the passage of time; but, alas, folk etymologies remain common, and I have heard argument-from-word-origin too many times for comfort.

Still, the dialogue can be fairly dull if you do not know ancient Greek. But the beginning and the end retain philosophic interest. Socrates investigates the connection between words and things. Cratylus holds that names are essential and elemental, even god-given, while Hermogenes first maintains that the signifier is arbitrary. Socrates effectively confuses both parties, until nobody is quite sure what they think. Along the way, several theories are entertained that now seem hopelessly naive, such that legislators gave original, onomatopoeic names long ago. Nevertheless, given the time in which it was written, this dialogue shows a remarkable prescience in its view of language and Plato's willingness to consider multiple factors. One wonders, then, to what extent Plato himself took it seriously'where the satire begins and ends'since questions of language are absent from his mature system.

By chance, I have just heard a recent version of the onomatopoeic theory of names (that the sounds of names imitate what they signify), put forward by Daniel Tammet (famous for his mental math and memory abilities) in a TED talk. Tammet suggests that names have emotional tones in their sound that even non-native speakers can grasp. He uses the Icelandic word "hnugginn" as an example, which apparently means "sad." According to Tammet, respondents with no knowledge of Icelandic are more likely to associate this word with negative emotions when given a choice. This certainly wasn't true in my case, since the word reminded me immediately of "hugging." I think Tammet would profit from this dialogue.